A photo and video collection on the surface faulting: the Mw 7.8 Kahramanmaraş (Turkey) earthquake of February 6, 2023

Introduction On February 6, 2023, two large earthquakes struck southeastern Türkiye near the Syrian border. The first one (the Kahramanmaraş earthquake) reached a magnitude Mw 7.8 rupturing the southern segment of the predominantly southwest-trending East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ). Just nine hours later, another devastating earthquake (Mw 7.6, the Elbistan earthquake) occurred about 90 kilometers away, along the east-west striking Northern Strand of the EAFZ, specifically the Sürgü–Misis Fault system (Figure 1). These earthquakes caused catastrophic damage across southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria, resulting in over 50,000 fatalities and tens of thousands of injuries. The most affected Turkish provinces included Kahramanmaraş, Gaziantep, Hatay, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, and others [AFAD, 2023; USGS, 2023; Kürçer et al., 2023]. In response to these disasters, the Italian Department of Civil Protection (DPC) organised, in collaboration with the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), an Italian scientific geological mission to Turkey in May 6-13, 2023. The team, composed of experts from the DPC’s Competence Centers (EMERGEO Working Group of INGV – Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ISPRA - Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale; INOGS – Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale), carried out a field survey in the areas affected by the Mw 7.8 Kahramanmaraş earthquake. The primary target was to collect data on the primary coseismic surface faulting in order to measure the displacement along strike and then reconstruct the near-fault slip distribution [Pucci et al., 2025]; moreover, the variety of deformation styles recognised in the field and other primary and secondary coseismic surface geological effects prompted us to document through photographs and videos, also employing a drone, the main structural features of the rupture. This kind of documentation, although collected in selected spot areas, is crucial not only for a better understanding of seismic source dynamics but also for supporting the reconstruction phase, with special attention to problems due to surface faulting in urbanised areas. In this collection, preliminarily we include a drone-recorded video of the Kisik, Kartal, and Harmanlı areas, providing a panoramic view of the coseismic rupture’s structuralpattern at a local scale. Moreover, we show the photos documenting the arrangement of the coseismic surface rupture extensively described in Pucci et al. [2025], affecting the districts of Islahiye, Nurdağı (Figure 3), Dulkadiroğlu (Figure 4), Pazarcık (Figure 5) and Gölbaşi (Figure 6, 7 and 8) districts, through the Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş and Adıyaman provinces. Finally, for the area of Gölbaşi (Figure 9), we present pictures of the impressive liquefaction effects responsible for further devastation inside the town. Note that some photos in close proximity are not shown on the location maps to improve readability. Nevertheless, accurate geolocation is guaranteed by the geographical coordinates included with each photo. In this paper, we present a selection of 125 pictures from over 4,000 photographs taken during the field survey carried out from 6 to 12 May 2023 along the central sector of the EAFS. Here the team surveyed a sector approximately 180 km long over more than 380 km of coseismic surface rupture produced during the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, characterised by predominantly leftlateral strike-slip displacements up to 6 metres and extensive liquefaction phenomena. It is important to note that, during the surface faulting processes, the finite coseismic deformation tends to rotate the early structures (from the theoretical angle with the general fault trend) and forms mixed-mode fractures (hybrid fractures), which displace according to both shear and extensional components due to near surface failure (Figure 2). Then, inside of a defined fault kinematics, we may observe a combination of coseismic structures, from compressional to extensional and pure strike-slip, that only after a careful mapping (Figure 2a) are able to depict the effective kinematics of a fault. For these reasons, we can observe compressive structures in a mainly trans-tensive context, or vice versa, that together (Figure 2b) define the strike-slip Principal Displacement Zone (PDZ; Figure 2c).